A.N.: Hey guys, sorry for the late chapter. I was busy with the moving back to college, and then the internet was down, so couldn't upload. Anyways, I am back. Enjoy the chapter. Let me know what you people think of the story so far.
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"Okay, I knew this was going to be a bit difficult, but this is getting ridiculous." Hermione muttered to herself in annoyance
It had been twelve days since she had started. Twelve days of hours of sessions, calling into a silent void that never answered. Her patience, honed in a previous life, though far being exhausted, was being tested in ways it had never been before. The frustration wasn't loud or angry; just simmering under the surface.
Yet again, she approached the practice with determination a new resolve, but it was a resolve brittle with impatience. She settled onto the floor, her eyes closing as the world faded away. The silence came, deep and profound, a perfect void she had meticulously crafted.
But this time, a single, irritating thought pierced the stillness, and she forgot the primary rule. She didn't let it go. Her frustration was a discordant note she couldn't ignore, and she clung to it, turning it over and over in the sterile quiet of her mind.
The method is perfect. The state is achieved. The result is null. Where is the flaw?
Her mind, honed by a life of scientific rigor, drifted back to a familiar principle. She faintly remembered countless examples where elegant theories and complex mathematical proofs had collapsed into ruin. It was rarely because of a mistake in the intricate steps of the calculation, but almost always because a single, foundational assumption—an axiom taken for granted—was wrong.
The base assumption... she thought, her focus narrowing with unnatural intellectual precision. What is my base assumption?
She replayed her process: achieve stillness, then command, 'Come to me'. The assumption was that magic needed to be called, that it was an external force.
And that's when it clicked, with the clean, cold logic. She was calling for someone to come into the house when they were already inside. They were wandering the halls, lost, and all her shouting was doing was echoing in an empty foyer. They weren't outside; they just didn't know where she was.
The goal wasn't to summon it. It was to be a beacon. To guide it.
The moment the realization solidified—be a beacon, not a summoner—the thought acted like a key turning a lock deep within her. It wasn't a door that opened, but a floor that gave way.
Her core self remained perfectly still, a fixed point of awareness, yet the world around her began a slow, inexorable descent. It was a profound paradox: the sensation of freefall while being utterly motionless. She barely registered the familiar white space of her mind wavering, crumbling at the edges before dissolving into silent dust as she plunged deeper.
When the feeling of falling finally ceased, she found herself standing in a world that had reformed around her. It was a vast, featureless expanse of cracked, dull grey earth under a perpetually overcast and sunless sky. There was no wind, only a monolithic quiet.
And in that quiet, stood ruins.
They were not pulling at her, calling to her. They simply were. A fact of the landscape. In every direction, some near, some on the horizon, stood the skeletal remains of colossal structures. She could see them with a stark clarity. A great library, its façade fractured and gaping, yet its foundation unyielding. A tall spire, half of it sheared away as if by a giant's blade, yet the remaining half still clawing at the grey sky. A once-beautiful temple, its roof collapsed, its pillars broken, yet somehow, it had not been levelled.
Each ruin was different, some more cracked and broken than others, but all were still standing. They were not monuments to glory, but testaments to survival. The silent, stoic evidence of a past filled with experience and trauma, of a soul that had been broken repeatedly, yet had never been brought down.
There was no awe, no fear, no sadness as she gazed upon this desolate kingdom. There was only a wave of profound, inexplicable familiarity, the feeling of returning to a home you can't remember leaving.
This was the landscape of her, his own history, and she knew every crack in the stone.
In that moment of perfect stillness and self-recognition, the beacon was lit.
And from the grey horizon, it came for her.
The fog rolled in, flowing steadily across the cracked earth. It wasn't a low-lying mist, but a high, solid wall of pearlescent vapor – a silent, inevitable tide sweeping through the ruins.
Then it reached her.
She felt it.
The cold.
Like COLD.
This wasn't the warm, fuzzy magic fanfics liked to ramble about – the one that bloomed in the heart and filled you with light. No. This was a physical cold. Harsh. Biting. The kind of frost from which even the thickest furs offered no comfort, the kind people instinctively recoiled from. It didn't just graze the skin – it sank, crept, claimed. Straight to the marrow. Straight to the soul.
Yet she didn't flinch.
She welcomed it.
She stood her ground, offering no resistance as the chill swept over her. She let it in, let it seep deep, saturate everything. It wasn't an invasion. It was a reunion – with her oldest and most faithful companion.
Memories surfaced, vivid and sharp, carried on the frost.
The loneliness. The silence. The deliberate isolation.
And the cold – always the cold – had been there with him through it all. Not as an enemy, but as the quiet backdrop to his survival. The environment where he'd honed himself. It was the clarity that burned away illusion, the discipline that kept him balanced, the stillness where control thrived.
It was power, stripped of sentiment. Absolute, focused, and silent.
Now, as the biting frost curled around her spine and settled into her chest, it didn't hurt. It didn't even sting. It simply was.
And in its embrace, she felt no fear. No pain. No confusion.
Only the profound, weightless certainty of being exactly where she was meant to be.
She was home.
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She didn't know how long she stood there, surrounded by the silent ruins and shrouded in the cold mist. Time had long since lost meaning. The fog wrapped around her like a second skin, its frost seeping in deeper than flesh, curling into the space behind her ribs and coiling in the quiet hollows of her mind.
And she let it.
There was no resistance, no urgency. Just the stillness of existence, of being.
Eventually, she opened her eyes.
The mist had changed.
It no longer glowed pearlescent silver. Now, it shimmered in hues of dark violet and deep indigo, shifting with subtle pulses of light, like a sky just before nightfall. It was... beautiful. Strange. Alive.
Was this her magic?
The question formed not in words, but in thought – quiet and simple. A soft inquiry pushed outward from her core, seeking something in return.
And something did respond.
It wasn't verbal. There was no voice, no language. Just a feeling, like a thread tugging gently at her chest. A whisper of truth, clear and unmistakable.
Yes.
A smile touched her lips – small, but real. For the first time in what felt like a long time, there was no mask, no calculated detachment. Just a whisper of warmth that had nothing to do with temperature.
"I'm glad," she said softly, whether aloud or in thought, even she couldn't tell. "We're going to go on an incredible adventure, you and I. This time, I'm going to do what I want. No duties. No burdens. Just… freedom. But for that… I'll need you."
And the fog answered.
The chill deepened – a sudden, sharp spike of frost that stole the breath from her lungs – but it wasn't painful. It was exhilarating. Thrilling. Like a surge of clarity that burned away doubt.
The mist began to stir. Slowly at first, then with gathering momentum. It twisted, coiling around her body, higher and tighter, until she stood at the still eye of a rising vortex.
The fog spun in a silent storm, an otherworldly dance of color and ice, violet and indigo flashing like distant stars caught in a blizzard. It circled her once, twice—then folded inward.
Into her.
There was no pain, no resistance. She let go, surrendered to it, and the magic rushed in. It surged through her like a second heartbeat, cold and electric, stripping her down to the root of her being and building her anew in its image. It wasn't violent. It was euphoric.
And then –
She opened her eyes.
Her room was quiet, dark with the hues of early evening. The carpet beneath her felt solid and familiar.
But there was frost.
A thin ring of it surrounded where she sat, no more than a foot wide. It glistened faintly, crystalline and delicate – tinged with that same strange bluish-purple, like the fog that still lingered behind her eyes.
Hermione Granger, age six, sat perfectly still at the center of it, breathing softly.
And for the first time in a long time, she smiled purely in joy.